


Here, at the end of all things

by LadyRhiyana



Series: Season 8 reaction ficlets [8]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Beautiful Golden Fools, F/M, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tragic Romance, spoilers for season 8 episode 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 16:39:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18814843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: Here at the end of all things – as it had been, in the very beginning – they have only each other.**[Or; the author attempts to make sense of episode 8x05.]





	Here, at the end of all things

**Author's Note:**

> *clears throat* So. I am a J/B shipper normally, but the only way I can make any kind of sense of episode 5 is through the lens of the grand tragic romance of Cersei/Jaime. As always for this series of ficlets, this is my immediate knee-jerk reaction to the episode. (That is, after I finally moved on from ??????)
> 
> The title comes from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

** 

1.

**

When he was a boy, old maester Creylen had told him that not all wounds were physical. Sometimes, he said, men were wounded not in body but in spirit. Sometimes they never recovered.

Jaime had never understood that, not until he learned to stand helpless day after day at the foot of the Iron Throne and see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing. Not until he learned to go far away inside. 

Perhaps, one day, he went so far away that he lost himself. Perhaps he never truly found his way back, not to the bright-spirited boy who had once knelt so eagerly before the Sword of the Morning.

**

Perhaps the wound had occurred far, far earlier than that. 

Perhaps he and Cersei truly had been born one soul in two bodies, and the separation had wounded them both irreparably. 

** 

2\. 

**

The city is burning. Soon Aerys’ long-hidden stockpiles of wildfire will start to go up. 

He doesn’t much care.

Perhaps something broke deep within him when he stood helpless and watched the Mad King’s daughter incinerate his men, when he stood helpless and watched ravening hordes of the dead overrun Winterfell.

**

Perhaps he’s no longer even the proud, unrepentant Kingslayer, willing to break every one of his vows if it meant saving the city.

** 

3\. 

**

Greyjoy’s knife had bit too deeply. Jaime can feel himself growing cold, knows that he’s bleeding out; still, he forces himself to go on, focused only on returning to Cersei, his other half of his soul. 

He knows what she is. He knows what she has done. He doesn’t care. 

When he finally finds her, when he holds her in his arms once more, nothing else matters. Not the burning city, not the screaming people dying in the streets, not the Dragon Queen triumphant. 

They flee deeper and deeper into the tunnels, hoping against hope until it becomes clear that there’s nowhere to go. 

**

4\. 

**

There had been a chance to turn aside. 

Another woman. Another life. 

But those weeks at Winterfell had been a fool’s paradise. 

**

Here at the end of all things – as it had been, in the very beginning – they have only each other.


End file.
